A Newsletter of Humorous Writing #393
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
For May 14-20, 2025
Hello and welcome to A Newsletter of Humorous Writing, a roundup of the week's finest short humor pieces and funny articles, and a celebration of the fantastic writers who wrote them. We got a bunch of new subscribers in the past couple of weeks — thanks and welcome! To celebrate, we’ve hidden a delicious chocolate somewhere in this newsletter, as a special treat for all subscribers, new and old!
What We Enjoyed This Week
What the Pope Was Like as a Kid by John Kenney (The New Yorker) This is a great premise, and a great example of how a topical idea can be a jumping off point for something evergreen: This one will be fresh long after the new Pope is out of the news. John’s character voices are wonderful here, and just specific enough that you can immediately picture the hometown friend who’s speaking.
I'll Tell Ya This For Free: Don't Use Your Freezer Too Much by Daniel Lavery (The Chatner) Daniel’s pieces are always such a unique blend of forms, and this is no exception. Part advice column and part rant, we also found this one to be way too relatable. It has especially nice turns-of-phrase, that are ever so slightly formal or archaic, yet colloquial: “I’ll admit to that freely;” “Wilts the spirit;” and “Go thou and do likewise.”
Pringles Hot Ones Los Calientes Rojo Crisps by Elaine Szewczyk (McSweeney’s) Speaking of exceptions in form, this food review is only superficially about the food. Elaine cleverly uses an insane sounding chip as a wedge into discussing relationships.
To the Dad Coaching Third Base, Wearing a “Women Want Me, Fish Fear Me” Hat by Tyler Gooch (McSweeney’s) There is lots of great riffing here and observation here, but what really sells this is the way Tyler places this one in a scene. Often these pieces are written after the fact, from the safety of the writer’s desk, but it’s really fun to slowly realize this is happening in real time, and see the consequences.
-- AD --
Letters & Sodas is celebrating it's one year anniversary! Hosted by Lana Schwartz (The New Yorker, The Onion, McSweeney's), Letters & Sodas brings together standup comedy, humor pieces, fiction, and essay readings in a way they never have been before - or at least not in recent memory.
In honor of the show's ONE YEAR anniversary, featuring:
Charu Sinha (Vulture, McSweeney's)
Samantha Mann (Elle, The Cut, Vogue)
Emily Kirkpatrick (I <3 Mess, Vanity Fair, People)
Justin Catchens (UCBLK, 89 Cavs)
Kenice Mobley (Netflix, HBO, The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon)
River CleggThe show is May 28 at 7 p.m. at the Greats of Craft in Long Island City and tickets are available here.
---
(Do you have an ad you'd like to place in the Newsletter? Fill out this form!)
An Old Favorite
Re: Sweat Nothing’s 2018 Deodorant Scents (for Men and Women) by Sophie Kohn (The New Yorker) We’ve mentioned this piece a few times over the years, and it remains one of the gold standards for marketing/advertising parody. This could have been a perfectly fine list of names and ideas for scents, but formatting this as emails lets Sophie build in conversation and office politics, which lets her explore the world and people around the wacky ideas, which makes this piece more unique and memorable than it might be if it were just a list.
Do you have an Old Favorite of your own? Let us know by filling out this form and we may run your pick in a future edition of the newsletter.
Updates From Your Hosts and Friends of the Show
Hope you enjoyed your sweet chocolate!
See you next week!
@lukevburns & @jamesfolta
We started this newsletter with our dear friend Brian Agler, and we want it to always honor his memory and his love of all things humorous. You can find our newsletter tribute to Brian here.
This newsletter is free, but if you enjoy it and want to support the work we do putting it together, you can subscribe to our paid tier, or you can send us a tip here. Any amount is greatly appreciated, and 1/3rd of each donation will go to Stand Up To Cancer.
If you'd like to place an ad in the Newsletter, please fill out this form.
If you have any thoughts, notes, wishes, or dreams for this newsletter, please email us or respond to this email and tell us what the score is!